Tea drinkers often use tea infusers or commonly known as tea balls for tea brewing. A tea infuser has a retainer which can be of various forms and shapes such as that of a ball, a tube, or in some fancy shapes such as a heart or a tea pot. The surface of the retainer usually has a number of fine holes arranged in some kind of pattern. The retainer can be filled with loose tea leaves or a teabag, and then be submerged under hot water so as to brew the tea within the retainer. A tea infuser often has an elongated handle, or otherwise has a connecting chain with a hook at one end that will be kept above the water level to allow easy retrieval of the unit after tea brewing.
Most tea infusers require a user to hand-stuff in an amount of tea leaves inside the retainer before it is immersed into a cup of very hot water for tea brewing. After sufficient time of brewing, the concentrated brew will seep out from the retainer through the fine holes into the hot water turning it into hot tea. To speed up the process and to reduce waste, the user often will have to repeatedly dunk the tea infuser into the hot water, or otherwise swirl the tea infuser around the hot water to allow more of the concentrated brew to come out of the retainer quickly.
It can be seen from the above description that tea brewing can require a fair amount of time and effort with the result that there is always a considerable amount of concentrated brew remaining inside the retainer that will be wasted as the brewed tea leaves are dumped. Additionally, the tea infuser still having a considerable amount of concentrated brew would tend to drip as the tea infuser is removed thus creating a mess.
For better convenience, drinkers often use teabags that can be dunked directly into a cup containing hot water for tea brewing. However, when this is done, the teabag would quickly rise to the surface as the air inside of it expands with the heat making tea brewing unduly long. Only after sufficient brewing time, then the tea bag will finally submerge. To counter this effect, a user often finds it necessary to have to use a spoon to force the teabag to remain submerged under the hot water. After the tea bag is sufficiently brewed, the user would then often have to repeatedly dunk the tea bag into the hot water so as to force more of the concentrated brew out.
In this case again, there is still a considerable amount of concentrated brew that remains within the tea bag. In order to be able to squeeze out this out, some users use what is called a tea press or tea squeeze in the shape of a pair of small flat spoons connected by a biased-open U-bend spring handle to squeeze out more of the concentrated brew. So now an additional separate implement is required in order to accomplish this.
Thus, there is a need for a tea infuser that will help speed up tea brewing, reduces waste, simplifies the process, and prevent dripping as presented herein.